Yankees were fined for improper use of phone

The New York Yankees were fined $100,000 by baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred for using their dugout phone to relay information about opposing teams' signs during the 2015 season and part of 2016.

The fine was disclosed in a Sept. 14, 2017, letter from Manfred to Yankees general manager Brian Cashman that is set to be unsealed in U.S. District Court in New York this week as part of a dismissed lawsuit by a fan. The letter's contents were first reported Tuesday by SNY.

MLB has said the fine was for violating rules on the use of the dugout phone but made the distinction that the Yankees did not use electronics to steal signs, a greater violation that led in January 2020 to the Houston Astros getting fined $5 million and resulted in one-year suspensions for Astros manager AJ Hinch and general manager Jeff Luhnow, who were both fired for the team's conduct during the 2017 season.

Manfred announced on Sept. 15, 2017, that he had fined the Yankees for violating a rule about the use of a dugout phone but did not publicly detail the violation and did not announce the fine amount. He announced the penalty at the same time he fined the Boston Red Sox for sending electronic communications from their video replay room to an athletic trainer in the dugout.

In the letter, Manfred said the Yankees filed a formal complaint with baseball's department of investigations on Aug. 23, 2017, about the Red Sox using a smart watch to relay information to players.

During the probe, an individual — the name was redacted in the copy of the letter set to be unsealed — said, “the Yankees used a similar scheme to that of the Red Sox to decode opposing clubs' signs and relay them to the batter when a runner was on second base,” according to Manfred's letter.

An individual, whose name also was redacted, “who initially noticed that the Red Sox were using a smartwatch to pass information to their players -admitted to the department of investigations that during the 2015 season and the first half of the 2016 season” that a redacted name “provided information about opposing club's signs to players and members of the coaching staff in the replay room at Yankee Stadium, who then physically relayed the information to the Yankees' dugout.”

A redacted name “also admitted that during that same time period, in certain stadiums on the road where the video room was not proximate to the dugout, used the phone line in the replay room to orally provide realtime information about opposing club's signs to Yankee coaches on the bench.”

“The New York Yankees were fined for improper use of the dugout phone because the replay review regulations prohibited the use of the replay phone to transmit any information other than whether to challenge a play,” MLB said in a statement Tuesday. “The Yankees did not violate MLB's rules at the time governing sign stealing.

“At that time, use of the replay room to decode signs was not expressly prohibited by MLB rules as long as the information was not communicated electronically to the dugout. Because rules regarding use of replay had evolved, many clubs moved their video equipment to close proximity to the field, giving personnel the potential ability to quickly relay signs to the field.”